SWIRE is the Spitzer Wide-field Infrared Extragalactic Survey (Lonsdale, PI). The acronym’s semblance to WIRE is not coincidental - the SWIRE science team coalesced from the science team of the failed WIRE mission. SWIRE was a fifty square-degree wide-areal survey with all the Spitzer imaging instruments (IRAC and MIPS). It was one of the first so-called Spitzer “legacy” surveys, and remains the largest areal survey at this depth to date. I designed our pipelines and oversaw the processing of the IRAC data, as well as source extraction and catalog generations. Much of the methodology developed as part of SWIRE was later adopted into the pipeline design of the Spitzer Science Center.

In addition to our Spitzer data, we also acquired a great deal of ancillary data, including optical imaging for almost the entire survey area, and extremely deep radio pointing. SWIRE has been particularly important in providing the basis for many additional studies.

A poster I presented at the AAS in 2005 on deep, wide number counts with Spitzer.